Avoiding Civil War 2.0 With Better Options

91 thoughts on “Avoiding Civil War 2.0 With Better Options”

1. If there was armed conflict, the Republicans have about three times the number of firearms as the Democrats.

   Oh, they have a lot more than that. Mostly because the Dems don’t have guns at all while the Reps do.

   This explains it clearly in graphic/meme form:

2. Actually, we are the ones pipelining to them natural gas. Cheap, fracking natural gas! No more brownouts in Northern Mexico now.

3. Hello Matteo/Luca!

4. true enough, minor skirmishes all those riots, and a lot of people do really dumb things. Question becomes if patterns emerge.

5. It’s not just passive persuasion though. The pizza-conspiracy shooting in D.C., the neo-nazi driving into the crowd and killing a woman, etc. Hate crimes are up (12% I think). So there are some real-world consequences.

   Still nothing like a real civil war. Have we forgotten the 1968 riots, Rodney King, the suffragists, we’ve got a whole lot of contentious issues in our past that resulted in occasional spilled blood but never went into whole-scale war. Current times are not all that unique, despite our alarm at the rhetoric.

6. I agree, but it’s not limited to mass media. Social media is also spreading a lot of propaganda, but if you pay attention to your feed, that’s coming from 10 or 20% of your social contacts. It’s just so inflammatory it gets your attention (as it’s designed to).

7. Some words used to trigger the bad-thoughts-and-ideas censure algorithm. Harmless umlauts flew under the wire.

8. What’s with the umlauts?

9. Yes, I’ve had the system tell me that I upvoted my own comment a lot of the time. Just bug #6758 of the comment system.

10. But what is a ‘radical’ or an ‘activist’? Do they reject Marxism, or just consider it insufficiently ‘radical’ or ‘activist’? Can we not just add up the three columns to get a close approximation of “some variant of socialist”?

    Odd that the researchers didn’t bother to ask radicals and activists to clarify their socialist/capitalist leanings…

11. Both parties have gone too extreme. Back in the day (not that long ago) there was a man named Bill, his wife was a total cunt, but he somehow made things work without blowing a load on the deficit (though he could blow them everywhere else).

    Whether you agree with this statement or not it remains true, the US has done the best economically and in terms of lower deficits when the following conditions are met: A Republican controlled House, Democrat controlled Senate, and a Democrat as President.

    Republicans are the biggest spenders in history when adjusted for inflation since the end of WW2, Democrats rarely get enough control to go apeshit with spending and never play as dirty when in power as Republicans do.

    It stands to reason that Democrats with most of the power with a Republican controlled House works best. The Democrats never seem to go too crazy when they have to wheel and deal with a Republican House, but important stuff still makes it through.

12. The main stream media is pushing this BS. Look at the recent Covington HS and Smollet crap that hit the fan. The left media keep pushing the victim status of everyone and bringing the MAGA hats up every time. They pushed the Tawana Brawley and the Rodney King BS to get people killed and stir up violence. If they run out of victims they fabricate them to fit their social agenda narrative.

13. Neocons can be members of the republican party, like anyone else can. Being an ideological Republican, and a neocon at the same time causes too much cognitive dissonance. They’re the controlled opposition to the party of big government/empire/(welfare/warfare state).
    Note the senators, and representatives, that freaked out when Trump announced withdrawal from Syria. Those are neocons, outright socialists, and the occasional paranoid.

14. Stupid people taking stupid actions is a certainty. It’s just one side is confident it will be dealt with in an efficient manner. The likelihood of anything catastrophically bad occurring is very small to nil, why go out of your way to solve a non problem.

15. The topic of civil war never fails to get the -60s clowns nostalgic and run their right amygdalas into overdrive.

16. Thanks. The little bell at the top said I did…now it dosen’t. It must be goofy.

17. Nice statistics, thanks.
    Take a look at Socialism-as-an-ideal (fewer stats…)

    The 97% number is hubris of my own making, I grant that. It was however hyperbole to underline that the Social Sciences and Humanities have gone teakettle-over-teacup for all flavors of Socialism, including the now-not-said-to-be Socialism wearing sheeps clothes, and called variously post-Modernism, Equity Rights Movement, government centrism, and the like. 

    JPeterson is quite clear on that.  
    Since he’s actually quite a competent statistician, 
    I tend to believe his position. 
    But not always.

    GoatGuy

18. A professor at Stanford did this analysis? Are you sure it wasn’t a couple of Sophomores who have taken a few classes sitting around getting high in a dorm room? Power & Money? Those are the drivers? And it’s just Trump supporters?
    No wonder ‘the masses’ have lost faith in
    institutions if this is what they produce. It’s disappointing the NBF actually
    thought this was worthy of space on its hard drives. Seems more like something
    I’d see on HuffPo.

19. I suspect his 97% characterization was less a statement on objective reality and more one of conviction.

    “Marxist” is just a pejorative label given by certain subcultures to anyone who isn’t as selfish as they are.

20. I immediately knew your 97% number was wishful thinking as I know humanities and social science professors and yet zero are Marxist. 5% and 17.6% for humanities and social sciences professors respectively describe themselves as Marxists

    https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.html

21. The good things were few but precious: affordable new housing, the highest living standard in the world…though it was not easy to go to any of these other places and use that wealth to vacation in luxury, because flying was expensive and dangerous. Less traffic. Lower crime (but only because those exposed to lead during this time had not grown up yet).
    Umm, did I mention affordable housing?

    Doesn’t seem like much.

    What they had was optimism and a desire to have infrastructural progress. We can have that again without bringing back coal, and obsolete factories. It starts with embracing future technology not the past.

    The greatest damage to our country was done by Republicans sucking up to car manufacturers. The downward spiral was caused by not requiring decent fuel economy from our cars, making us import more and more oil making us slip from trade surplus to trade deficit. That caused all the other countries to exchange their American dollars for our gold, causing major economic damage. And the Republican officials gave permission to GM to use leaded fuel causing a massive crime wave for decades, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, the breakdown of the family…
    The Democrats did damage too. Unions killed industry, forced the corporations to put their factories elsewhere, and made it so we get almost nothing for our tax dollars. Green has some blame and some good. Clean water/air, but they nearly killed nuclear power, and shut down growth making housing expensive.

22. I am neither liberal nor conservative but I would say electing Trump cost some “greatness”. And I am not blaming people for not voting for Hillary either. It is just that he has destroyed the dignity of the office, been abusive to whomever he has the urge to…publicly. Has anyone even counted how many people he has put down as being intellectually inferior?
    And in those times of “greatness”, were they looking forward or backward?
    Nostalgia can be blind to racism, inefficiency, pollution, danger, and carcinogens. Thalidomide babies, DDT, black lung, polio, asbestos, lead, arsenic, and mercury. Unreliable cars that frequently had difficulty making it up hills, steam going everywhere, with frequent tire blowouts. Or the millions dying in their early forties of heart disease, cancer, or industrial accidents. Anyone could be committed for being crazy and locked away and/or lobotomized. Bland food, terrible canned food. Very thin drywall, and iron plumbing. No telephone but a corded Bell phone you had to pay a dollar a minute to talk to someone 3 states away and were barely able to hear. 3 channels, maybe 4 on the TV which turned to snow at 1AM-5AM. Share cropping, segregation, Lynch mobs and the clan. Forced sterilization.
    I don’t think it is an accident that he got almost zero African American votes.
    Forced to thanklessly fight in wars few people agreed with.
    People blackballed and interrogated in front of the entire country suspected of being “red”.

23. I probably am younger than you, but I wouldn’t call myself a young man.

    I agree, those are great eras in our history, and there’s many other examples of greatness that’s came out of this country. I would remind that during many of those “Great” eras, there were many atrocities being committed as well which seemed normal in our society at the time, i.e. slavery, or the slaughtering of the natives to name a couple.

    I believe we still have many “Great” eras ahead, and we are in a great era now. I enjoy Astronomy, and I’m amazed everyday of the discoveries that are being made.

    I feel that your idea of what America should be is probably subjective. I know mine can be at times. When I got out of the military I was more right-leaning. I even listened to Hannity if you could believe it. Over time, working around people that had different views than mine, made me have to view all sides subjectively. My views on what I think America should strive for, is to be less extreme, and remember that the reason why humans group up, and start societies, and civilizations is to be safe, and take care of one another.

    No group of people should be painted with a broad brush. I do subscribe to the idea that if it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, so on, and so fourth.

24. Not a likely scenario. I think the most likely precipitating event would be Trump stopping remittances. That would certainly piss them off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance

25. “97% of university Humanities and Social Sciences departments both
    publicly and with policy, are unapologetic Marxists and/or
    Post-modernists, at the core”

    So what? They’re free to be unapologetic “whatever the hell they want”.

    Only the irrational and the inept can leap from a mater for the police to civil war. The inept in the hinterlands thinks these are the “good” old days, they obviously have no clue as to the realities of modern warfare-I wish them luck.

26. Trump has already saved the UNited states from civil war 2.0 by rejecting Muslim jihads as citizens and erecting the Great Wall of mexico…

27. its the federal government that holds everything together… if states stop listing to federal government…like the federal government says its illegal but the states refuse to stop doing it because they don’t agree….then the federal branch has to send in the troops to restore order… I suppose if that condition were allowed to go to an extreme then it’s a type of civil war… but it’s unlike to lead to a war without riots that get out of control… these days the only angry people I see are all the liberal-tards on NPR radio. I would rate their chances of success as very low however since they support gun control.. 😉

28. I think the north vs south analog is flawed it’s the old monied/ political class vs the new age industrial class the east/west coast vs central and southern world view and they are amplified by the political inequality Arkansas farmer is worth 40 California suburbanites at the ballot a decade away the white vs black thing is history but the rich black woman will be just as resistant to majority rule as the old rich white man is now – your problem is economic inequality and the power it supports- you want to survive you need to transition to a fully representative democracy and a regulated capitalism

29. Well,

    You are probably younger by me.

    But in any case, here’s what I think: that America WAS once quite a great country. Take your period, it has had its eras of greatness: the new nation era, the post-civil-war era, the Great Industrialization era, the mass-production and assembly line eras. The era of polymers, the era of pharmaceuticals, the eras of electronics, of computer science, of television and cinema. We have had our eras of greatness, good man. 

    However, actually in keeping with your sentiments (namely that America is now a WAS, not an IS), the reason why I sometimes wear the MAGA hat is just as you say: to foment the idea that the once-great can, and with effort, should possibly return to the kinds of greatness outlined above. What’s wrong with that, young buck?

    The BIG PROBLEM is that The Left, and especially the anti-freedom post-modern neo-Marxists, absolutely HATE the idea of a renewed, productive, financially secure, internationally independent, non-socialist, non-Marxist, unapologetic America. They (and it sounds like you) absolutely hate the idea. 

    So, as you’ve done, you have conflated the not-true Position Statements about our president upon the whole Repüblıcan party. And in so doing, you then have cast a very large portion of the proud, thinking, faithful and honorable American public as having a bad social intention. 

    We do not.
    In any way.

    But again: I’m probably wasting keystrokes in so saying.
    Hope not!

    GoatGuy

30. The groups are

    Trump and his supporters

    Traditional Republicans

    Traditional Democrats

    Socialist-wing of Democrats

    I don’t think this is right at all. The big innovation that Trump brought was that he realized he could play identity politics just as well as the Democrats did. As a result, the groups are all identity-based.

    Brian’s list is driven by ideology more than interest or identity. Ideologies overlap. Interests overlap. But identities are almost pathologically driven to become exclusive. Even though many people share the traits of more than one identity group, the cultural and media environments force them to subordinate their other traits to the interests of the identity that they adopt.

    My list of the ones with stable power:

    Urban professional
    Working class
    Rural
    Black
    Latino
    Women
    Elderly
    Young

    We have two big problems:

    1) While identity politics is the best way to win elections, it’s the worst way to govern. This makes government historically dysfunctional.

    2) You’ll notice that “white” doesn’t show up on my list. Traditionally, whites were in such a majority that it wasn’t a useful trait for identity politics. Trump is making that change. I don’t think it’s as big a problem as the media is making it out to be, but it’s definitely more of an issue than it was. If we really wind up with a “white” identity (beyond the tiny number of white supremacist and Nazi loons), we really will be in a situation where a hot war is possible.

31. You knew what you were asking for, everyone does, that where’s that dumbass hat.

    I’ll let you in on a secret Goat. America was never great. All we got is a big military, and a few good ideas about how to live life. Those few good ideas are overshadowed by politics like yours, and all of the MAGAt’s on this site. Take that and chew on it for a bit. You’re so smart right?

32. Its OK: I am actually quite encouraged by your genteel reply. I was thinking you were one of those cussed-thoughtless types. Glad to see you’re not. Keep up the comments! Just cuss a good bit less… GoatGuy

33. I apologize. I didn’t know the great Goat was a oppressed middle-aged white man.

34. To much bullshit is bad for you bud.

35. Definitely an older-generation patriarchy there. Some of my closest friends are Mexicans one of which is in the Mexican restaurant industry here in the U.S. (but authentic, not Tex-Mex). He tells me that the moles are different from state to state, town to town, and you really have to search them out. The food in Oaxaca is different from Baja, etc.

36. True enough. 

    Recent trips there have uncovered an interesting phenomenon: most of the food there is actually pretty ho-hum; you have to search pretty closely to find the really lovely stuff.  

    It needn’t be terribly expensive, either.  

    Indeed: some of the best meals I’ve had were made at “holes in the wall” powered by four or five Mamacitas laboring in the kitchen, and waitressed by the cute, glowing youngest girls of the clan.  

    The boys either were roasted for the guests in a nice Chile Diablo, or were more likely simply MIA.  
    It seems to be a cultural thing.  
    Women work. 
    Men play.  
    And smoke, and drink, and get into fights.  

    Anyway, those are the recent-visit recollections.

    GoatGuy

37. Its as JPeterson has repeatedly cited (tho’ from a different angle): in a place like Oregon, where the majority (of at least the voting public) have avidly promoted equality-of-outcome, equality-of-groups and especially, anti-Right pölïtical sentiments, the response of the public has been to feather itself also with some of the most radical of the Left. Least in touch with Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship and Freedom to Differ-in-opinion. Hence, the hoaxing of The Right. 

    Just saying, if you (me, we, us, most thinking people) really believe in the right to free speech, free thought and free worship, then as the old saying goes, we “really ought to fight – if need be to our own peril — for YOUR right to say what you believe, EVEN though we do not agree with you in the least.”

    Such really is to be an American, and to believe in the Constitutionally given rights to these freedoms.  

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

38. A Magnificent American, you are. (channeling the prosody of Yoda). Let’s just say… you’re in the line after Brian Wang, our fine leader. We still after a year and a half, haven’t seemed to have overlapping schedule opportunities. THANK you though.

39. What it is is a microcosm of the Marxism that has almost completely taken over the Humanities at both Universities and State Colleges, country-wide. JPeterson cites that over 97% of university Humanities and Social Sciences departments both publicly and with policy, are unapologetic Marxists and/or Post-modernists, at the core.  That’s what Berkeley is the microcosm of… GoatGuy (PS it is also my Alma Mater, Schools of Chemistry and L&S-Mathematics (computer science))

40. Hey Goat I live in Oakland, want to get lunch sometime? [email protected]

41. Yes. Outside a BART station, West Oakland. I should have known better.

42. …plus the food is amazing.

43. Indeedy, México — having visited the place a fair bit — just wants Gringo Cash, almost more than anything else. They LOVE being able to load up trainloads of fresh vegetables, pipelines full of natural gas, tankers full of petrochemicals, container after container of flimsy furniture to ship to El Norte.  For Cash. Love it. 

    I truly am happy with our Southern Neighbors.  
    So much so, that like a trio of my good friends, I’m considering emigrating. 
    For retirement.

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

44. LMAO

45. LOL… “payola to keep them at Repüblıcan events”.  Respect. GoatGuy

46. By the way, this country will never be great with fûques like you in it.

    Ah, well … lucky for us, it’ll be just fine. It doesn’t take many IQ points to go all Tourettes on a forum, you know.

    Try, if you will, to get your head around the fact that “Her Body, Her Choice” in this country also means, “His Child, Not His Choice”. Fathers-to-be have not a single “right” in determining whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy.  

    None.

    Yet, when it comes to the financial burden of raising a child whether it is theirs or not, if they’re listed on the Birth Certificate as the father, it becomes theirs to support. 

    For life. 
    Even when DNA tests show otherwise.  

    Yah… I am definitely a Red Pill MRA (mens rights advocate). Its probably wasting keyboard strokes, but everyone really does need to watch The Red Pill — all the way through — at least once. I don’t want to impose anything on Women that they don’t wish to impose on us. Fairly. Evenly.

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

47. Are you saying you were assaulted for wearing a maga cap?

48. I thought they had gone away too until the recent Oregon incident where the local chapter ‘weapons trainer’ tried to kill two police officers at his daughter’s school while wearing a ‘smash the patriarchy’ shirt. I didn’t realize they were actively engaged in weapons training. For all intents and purposes it sounds like they are still organizing. This event was custody related but shows the mindset.

49. “People who wear MAGA hats in public”.

    And I personally had the contusion, bruises and sprained wrist to show for it; frankly it was ugly.  

    When you think about it, what is “insanity”? 

    I believe having a hatred of something ostensibly acceptable (if not laudable), and having lost the modicum of civility to the point of engaging in battery … constitutes such an insanity. Does NOT matter if the whackjobs are politically motivated, or not. (i.e. if somehow “battery in the name of one’s politics, or against those advertising their entreaties contrary to your politics” is justified, then I do see a Civil War coming.)

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

50. Yes… but tho’ I vote & vote & vote for it, we still have a united-in-land, but divided-in-polity state of California.  It’d be quite easy to divide it up into exactly 2 parts, like interlocked lamb chops: Coast, north, from about Mendocino to the Nevada border and up to Oregon as one chop, with the “hanging bone” part going down the Sierras all the way to Mojave.  

    The other chop would be the rest.

    The trick is “what to do” about the Great Central Valley.  Its farmers are almost entirely Repüblıcan. Well… let ’em vote on it.

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

51. Like I said, I think someone decided the Antifa were counterproductive at this point, and yanked their funding. Right now the real emphasis is on “deplatforming”. I expect that to ramp up dramatically leading up to the 2020 election.

    But the thing about political violence like the Antifa, or the nascent Red guard in our universities, is that they’re easier to turn on than turn off. Especially when the need for deniability precludes clear chains of command.

    Anticipate some serious attacks on conservative political activities next year. More assassination attempts. Fire bombing campaign headquarters, people in the ‘wrong’ hat being assaulted. That sort of thing.

52. I don’t think so.

    Dear Mr. Future is having issues with the back-end comment-system getting confused with regard to the links-to-article pointer associated with each comment. Take it from a VERY old and not unsophisticated database guru.  

    Or as we say, “Pointers … like knives … will cut you if you grab ’em by the wrong end”

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

53. Or perhaps people who routinely work with hard logic are less disposed to ignore facts that result in a different world view than the popular narrative of a historically oppressive party.

54. I definitely see your point.

55. OK I’d agree with lukewarm.

    Thing is I expect “civil war” to have a certain signature.

    FIRST, I’d expect to see small pölïtical earthquakes — unexpected, position changing — between mainstream lobes of the LEFT-RIGHT continuüm. AntiFa, ostensibly “anti fascist”, turns out to be fascist in demanding homologous thought.

    But is it a tide or an earthquake?  

    Even in 2016 with its much videoed “violence” (the media just loves to capitalize on mano-a-mano conflict from 17 angles), how great of a movement is it? I’d argue, it is a pipsqueak at speaking-end of a megaphone. A loud mouse. AntiFa in turn seems to be more of a tide-of-feeling than the result of increased pölïtical tectonic pressure.  

    SECOND, I’d expect to see “the pölïtical arming” of the sides against each other. (In this, you’ve got my agreement re:lukewarm civil conflict). There isn’t a thing the Prez and the Republicans can do, say, postulate, author or argue that doesn’t immediately result in scores of loud, feisty, fake-outraged, media pumped, social-media head-losing rhetoric. So, the pölïtical arming is happening; just hasn’t become terribly mainstream.

    THIRD, I’d expect pölïtical rallies larger than handfuls of whackjobs from the edges gathering their megaphones and shouting like tenderloin loons. We occassionally see significant rallies; but it doesn’t feel that a pair of new, stronger, more mutually belicose factions has come to be.  

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

56. You, and ole fucktard Brett keep telling yourselves that. This site must by a secret hiding place of delusional alt-right assholes that have daily circle jerks.

57. Hahaha! Such a shortage. I guess the Planned Parenthood shooter wasn’t right-wing, or the Charlottesville fuck that ran over protesters wasn’t right-wing, or let see just the other day a self-professed White Nationalist Coast Guard officer that was planning to shoot up politicians, and journalists wasn’t right-wing???

    Please, don’t play us as stupid. You’re just another conspiracy believing moron, that gets a hard-on listening to Rush Limbaugh. Damn MAGAts. By the way, this country will never be great with fucks like you in it.

58. Basically the only thing keeping the Klan around at this point is the income from Democrats paying them to show up at Republican campaign events. And half the time they just hire actors, instead.

59. The database for the comments is probably corrupted.

60. Something else is wrong too, my replies aren’t going to the right person. One seemed to jump after it was posted to the next level thread.

61. The left had no real platform other than identity politics. They told everyone they were being oppressed and a lot of people believed them even though the evidence shows there is no problem with white supremacy in the US. If you look at the hate crime stats blacks are actually very over represented as offenders compared to whites. White supremacist groups are completely fringe, without any power, and made up of imbeciles. If you wanted to dig further you can find that the organizers of the Charlottesville rally were actually lefties. The entire event was a Smollett.

62. Seriously, there’s such a shortage of right wing political violence in America that the left has had to create hoaxes to fill the demand. So many hoaxes that the cumulative effect has been to create the *impression* of a real problem.

    Meanwhile, who’s actually getting attacked? People who wear MAGA hats in public. That’s who. But it doesn’t look like that because the hoaxes get all the coverage.

63. Is Berkeley representative of the nation? No.

    Is it representative of universities? A much less emphatic no. More of a leading indicator.

64. Hmm, it says I gave this the thumbs up. I must have done that accidentally. 🙁

65. Berkley is the least representative campus you can pick in the US politically.

    I’d be more concerned with the Right, skinheads who have crawled out from under their rocks emboldened by a raciest President.

    I don’t think there is any chance of a civil war over this stuff, but there could be a lot of abuse.

    Someone knows who this guy is. He will be on his way to jail soon enough. With video everywhere, thankfully a lot of this stuff ends before it really festers into something larger.

66. Do you really think that Berkeley CA (and even moreso, the Cal campus) is a microcosm of the USA?

67. Nazis(national socialists) are a flavor of socialism where the means of production are controlled by corporations, but ultimately, everything is under governments central control, this is what the democrats, and neocons are moving towards. Read policy statements of the German NAZI party from the 1930s, and observe their economic management during the third reich.
    Republicanism, support of the constitutional republic is anathema to any flavor of socialist, since the republic limits government power. All socialists, NAZIs, Communists, and undecided are denizens of the left. The convention that places NAZIs on the right is a way to confuse the issue.
    Where are the Libertarians? Since they are the ideological opposite of Socialists, perhaps they should get the RRR label.
    On the other hand, the Libertarians largely hold traditionally Republican values. The current leadership of the Republican party, with the exception of the President, is composed of neocons, or if you prefer, RINOs. There core beliefs vary little from the Democrat leadership’s. Perhaps LIbertarians should receive a R label.

    I like to think of neocons as democrats, who are anti-sex.

68. If you are just talking Republicans vs Democrats, I’d say it is just about zero. The parties found there was opportunity to get voters to the poles and get people to persuade others to, by exerting social pressure, if they acted more aggressively toward the other party. And it has escalated. But it is all hot air. The fraction of people that would take up arms over this are trivial. The Media has been fanning the flames because it means more viewers at a time in which everyone is abandoning TV, watching what they want to watch…which is not ads, playing video games and just going to websites they enjoy. The more the media exaggerates the divide and invites the most vocal verbal combatants, the more ratings they get. And, of course, they are motivated to make things more entertaining as nearly every dollar that funds political campaigns ends up eventually in the hands of media, because the campaigns buy advertising and media is the biggest seller of advertising.

69. This sort of thing is why I’m pessimistic about avoiding a civil war. Our universities are incubating something similar to the Red Guard, and it has been getting steadily worse.

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/leftist-thug-caught-on-video-assaulting-conservative-berkeley-student-while-fellow-students-laugh/

    These people aren’t becoming pacifists on graduation.

70. I’d say it is profoundly unlikely near term. The biggest issue we would fight for is government failing to abide by the Constitution. It would require Trump or other leader suspending elections and taking control. But as long as everything is operating in accordance with the Constitution, I have extreme doubt that there would be a civil war.

    Failing that, we would need an issue that millions of people feel strongly enough to sacrifice their lives for. The only issue remotely close would be abortion. But the committed antiabortion people are not really into killing, so it is unlikely to rise to that. And with 40 years of liberal education, numbers of antiabortion people are diminishing.

    Generally, I think you also need a States vs States or region vs region or easy identification of sides for most issue based hostility to turn into a war. The obvious but unlikely one would be African Americans just rebelling. But that seems very unlikely. There are things that could happen, that would make them riot for a week or even a month…but nothing that would escalate to them all taking up arms and just shooting every European American they see.

    If Trump used his “Commander and Chef” role to attack Mexico, and fire on States he took to be “on Mexico’s side” that could certainly do it. Hard to say Trump won’t do anything…but he would have to be certifiable to do that. And, I find it exceedingly unlikely that Mexico would give cause to do anything like that.

71. If it were a matter of east vs west, or north vs south, that would be feasible.

    As it’s more a matter of high density urban areas vs everywhere else, how do the cement and aggregate seceed from each other?

72. Statist, rigid, command and control wars of the past (in “wars” I include political warfare) have been replaced by a vast on-line information conflict that uses persuasion as weapon of choice.

    Nowwe have tribalism armed with information. The human brain can only handle so many conflicting ideas at the same time, and uses a filtering system. That system is relatively easy to manipulate (see AOC, racial attack hoaxes, WMD in Iraq etc). In the past, that “persuasion influence” system was the sole weapon for a handful of political/economic/media “tribes” because only they had the means to influence. Nowadays that same weapon is in the hands of, well, almost everyone. A 20-something from NYC can dictate the agenda of the Democratic party, a hiphop star can get millions of blacks to vote otherwise.

    Certainly the traditional power structure is not impotent, but they are far less influential. Our new warfare is sliced and diced into many segments competing for attention. Eventually the war-makers create patterns. E.g., 50+ hoax racial attacks is a pattern. “Free stuff for everyone” and “building a wall” in dozens of nuances are patterns. Patterns = power.

    Anarchy? No, far from it. Those who REALLY understand persuasion can persuade the influencers. It doesn’t mean AOC is a puppet, but it is conceivable she is being influenced (unwittingly) by others (not from the old power structure) who have a different agenda.

73. Unfortunately 77 year old Bernie Sanders will even things out.

74. Like that’s the only relevant difference between the two sides.

    Who has the guns?
    Who comprises more of the formal military?
    Who occupies physically vulnerable locations?
    Who dominates media platforms?
    Who dominates the government bureaucracy?

    The list goes on and on; The two sides in this potential civil war are not comparable on a lot of metrics, some of which favor one side, some of which favor the other.

    Most of the metrics that favor the left have to do with command/control/information. Most of the metrics that favor the right have to do with the mechanics of physical confrontation.

    So I would say that the left is favored if they can keep the civil war merely warm, wear the right down without it ever becoming a physical fight. If they push too hard, though, and get that physical fight, most of the dead will be on the left.

75. Not so much “missing” as “misplaced”, Brian. They’re ending up on the wrong articles.

76. I’d put it at least to luke warm, given some of what the Antifa got up to back in 2016. Having a large group around specifically devoted to physically attacking its political enemies is something we hadn’t had to deal with since the Klan sank into irrelevance.

    I haven’t heard much out of the Antifa lately. I’m not sure whether that’s due to the lack of a Presidential election to get them excited, the media suppressing any reports, (Sadly plausible.) or whoever was funding and organizing them deciding that the operation had been a bad idea.

    That last would be an optimistic take.

    Right now where things are really advanced isn’t on the physical confrontation end of things, but instead what Glenn Reynolds likes to call “battlespace preparation”; The “deplatforming” movement, for instance. Perhaps they’ve decided to put off physical confrontation until after they’ve secured the means of communications.

77. Please dont lie you banned people of this site for a political opinion you dont like.
    I can no longer connect to this website at all can only use VPN.
    Comments removed and i cant access website even IP change and cookie clear except VPN? yea congrats censorship, since my opinion was against radical leftist the same people who deplatform people from twitter, patreon, youtube, reddit etc i now know who you are and what you stand for.

78. I used to be really concerned about all this, but now I’ve shifted my position to “whatever, I’ll just grab some popcorn and watch the shitshow”

79. Big media and the business it is part of grows up around big government. They would like you to believe otherwise, but check it out. Mostly they want more of the same. when have we ever had a free press. It has not been that way because it is a monopoly managed press. If we would decentralize far enough individuals who would want to could make themselves reporters, choose their stories and what angle to take on them. With the competition of sources and ideas we would have the cross examination of issues that we need and we wouldn’t have dissenting scientists dismissed by the paid alarmists as “paid skeptics”. They might deal with the scientific points that are made and science would have the doubts and skeptics that are always fundamentally necessary to make valid science and let intelligent lay people to decide their own opinions.

80. Among the better options for those who seek political positions and their supporters is to stop using fighting and battle terms and making enemies out of opponents. In the competition for positions in government we have to have opponents. we don’t have to have enemies even if other people are treating us as enemies. Instead of fighting and battles, refer to working, loving, listening, learning and achievement.

81. I have reported that there are missing comments to Spot.im

82. Then just peacefully divide US into two parts. There’s no need to have civil war 2.0.

83. One side average age is 58 and the other side average age is 30. I will let you guess which side will win.

84. The ruling class seems to fear nothing as much as they fear white ethnonationalism. They certainly don’t seem to penalize, vilify, or persecute anything as much.

    Maybe they’re on to something.

85. To further my points made about Big Media, consider how good BM’s reputation is, relative to its behavior. People hear “Big Oil” or “Big Tobacco” and think “evil” (not least because of BM’s efforts). They hear “Big Tech” and they get a much more positive image, because despite the competition with Big Media, there’s a rather incestuous relationship between the two. They hear “Big Media” and they think “you must be a Breitbart crazy.” This is literally nuts. Big Media is FAR more destructive than Big Oil or Big Tobacco. No contest.

86. Big Media isn’t some sideline player. BM is a central player. One could make the argument that Big Media is the center of the corporate sector, in terms of political power. And the corporate sector is hardly a sideline player.

    It’s pretty easy to make the argument that America’s system of gov’t is media-cracy.

87. Hmmm… transitioning from a “cold civil war” to a “hot civil war” seems — at least today — still far more hyperventillated of a concept than anything I (and my long memory, as well as study of histories) allow for.  

    Consider:

    LLL → Marxism and Socialism, nutjobs, Antifa blowhards
    ⋅⋅LL → Democratic (“Euro-style”) socialism
    ⋅⋅⋅L → Majority of Democrats
    ⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅ → Ambivalent centrists
    ⋅⋅⋅R → Majority of Republicans
    ⋅⋅RR → Avid Repüblıcan Nationalists
    RRR → Nazis, skinheads, whackjobs, illiberal nutcases

    The RRR and LLL really, really don’t like each other. The LL and RR don’t much care for each other either. But this is nothing new. They NEVER have.

    By our fine (well engineered, thank you very much Jefferson, Adams, Monroe, Franklin…) form of government, we’ve always had tolerance for everything from LLL to RRR in our country. And, at times, one side or the other makes more noise. 

    Where are we today?

    Oh, FAR noisier than say 4 years ago, or 12, or 20, or 28 … to be sure.
    But nowhere near :the brink:.

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy

88. The Soros-funded Deep Media State!

    … well, either that or NBF switched to requiring https in the middle of the hooraw and the comments didn’t make the jump for some reason.

89. It appears there’s some sort of a glitch in the comments because I’m seeing Ai comments on the F-21 article. Anyone else having this problem?

90. What on earth happened to all of the comments?

91. The problem is one side refuses to even believe its possible and looks everywhere but reality. The other side doesn’t understand that after a civil war NOTHING will ever be the same.

    Chaos and death or authoritatian fascist governments…or both!

    When you understand psychology, history, and politics and the rules of the modern world you realize how truly screwed we are….oh well CHEERS!

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